A Façade City

"Bath is a façade city," said our tour guide Charlotte. "For wealthy Georgians, this place was Las Vegas or Monte Carlo. It was all about tourism. So the money was spent on the front of buildings, not so much on the back."

She really did look a lot like Imogen Stubbs, did Charlotte. But her tour was progressive and electric. She wasn't trying to sell Bath's image as a place of Austen-franchise romance. She wanted to take us behind the "honey coloured sandstone" to the impulses and real stories behind Bath's architecture and existence. She started with the myth of Bladud, a leper whose pigs were cured of leprosy in the spring waters of Bath, and who founded the settlement the Romans later called Aqua Sulis. Then she talked us through the Roman settlement and the Georgian appropriation of the Roman myth, before talking about more modern controversies - like the overpriced and overdue Thermae Baths, a privatised venture selling "Taking the Waters" in modern architecture. Stuart and I had nearly gone to the spa instead of the tour. We were right to change our minds. A walking tour of Bath, starting at the Abbey, taking in Pultney Bridge, the Circus, the Crescent, Beau Nash's Theatre Royal, the Thermae, Jane Austen's house in Trim Street (Austen hated it, and I loved her for hating it), and the medieval wall just around the corner. It was 90 minutes of ocular delight and intellectual thrill.

I was in a lot of pain walking around Bath, though. My foot was screwed. I took my last codeine tablets just trying to stay good humoured, but I still cracked the shits when we embarked on tour number two at the Roman Baths, an interminable trove of audio devices we all held up to our ears, shuffling through the (Georgian restored) Roman Baths. I could barely stand the longwinded audio tour after taking such a great walking tour. I turned the damn thing off. Stuart had one of the biggest smiles I've seen on his face this whole trip - he loved the Roman Baths! I felt more in common with the slutty teenage girls taking ass pics by the baths themselves, next to a paid model dressed as a Roman Matron photobombing everyone's instagram. I wanted to take some slutty shots myself, but I didn't want to throw my back out.

We had Sicilian for lunch. Our waiter had platinum curled hair and dark brown eyes. I had an espresso with lemon and sugar in it.

Anyway, I loved Bath. And the fact that we got a parking ticket for 25 pounds because their own parking system was broken didn't depress me. Stu is disputing it. He is right to dispute it, but I am more "this river lives in Mombasa anyway" about it all. And let the record show: if the council hadn't been so shitty with their parking, we would have spent a LOT more money in their little town, so, lol. #TooBadSoSad

After we got home, I went and had a quick shave (just with foils, not with a blade) at Exposure Barbers, then Stu bought a book, we had a beer, and some KFC for dinner.Read more